It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

Politics is the art of the possible.